1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to devices by which garments can be hung for storage and, more particularly, to garment hangers which can be folded or collapsed for storage, packing, or insertion into or removal from a garment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many garments intended for wear on the human torso have often presented problems of storage when not in use. Outside China and some other countries of Asia (where such garments were traditionally designed to be folded into a flat shape for storage in boxes or cabinets) problems of storage arise from the fact that such garments are cut from patterns of cloth and fabricated in a manner which can generally follow the compound curves of the human shoulders and upper torso. Accordingly, devices (commonly known as clothes hangers) for hanging garments from a fixed structure such as a hook or horizontal rod have been developed which, to a greater or lesser degree follow the shape of the human shoulders to avoid excessive distortion or wrinkling of a garment during storage.
However, to provide such a function by simulation of the shape of the human shoulders, such garment hangers have been necessarily of dimensions which are inconveniently large or bulky and generally of rigid form, particularly when made from light-weight materials such as wire. Therefore, the hangers themselves are difficult and inconvenient to store and efforts to reduce weight and bulk generally result in structures which can become tangled with each other and/or cause damage to the garments stored thereon.
Further, to remove the garment from a garment hanger, it is generally necessary to remove the garment hanger from the fixed hook or rod structure, separately remove the garment from the hanger and to replace the garment hanger on the fixed hook or rod. These actions generally require both hands to be used and may be inconvenient and somewhat time-consuming.
An additional difficulty is presented by the fact that many garments in current styles have a neck opening of limited size or which may even require the neck opening to be stretched over the wearer's head when donning or removing the garment. Rigid garment hangers usually must be inserted from the bottom (e.g. waist or lower hem) of such garments which is particularly inconvenient, particularly for one-piece dresses and the like.
Folding garment hangers are known in which the folding function is intended to facilitate storage or insertion into a garment. However, since weight and bulk of the garment hanger is of concern, early designs provided arms which folded upward from an operative position toward an upper portion of the garment hanger, generally in the form of a hook or other arrangement for supporting the garment hanger, which engaged a fixed hook or rod structure, alluded to above. Such an arrangement provided for the arms to pivot downward into an operative position against rigid stops in the garment hanger structure to more reliably support the weight of the garment. However, this feature also complicated the process of removing the garment hanger from the garment as well as placement of the garment thereon and increased the risk of damage to the garment since folds of cloth could become pinched between portions of the hanger structure, including the stops, and snagging of the garment by the arms of the garment hanger. It can readily be appreciated that for removal of a garment from such a garment hanger, that any snagging of the garment on the arms of the garment hanger tends to increase the dimensions of the garment hanger.
Garment hangers in which the arms fold downwardly from an operative position have presented the problem of reliable support of the weight of the garment which has heretofore required trade-offs in regard to the inconvenience of placing the arms of the garment hanger in an operative position after the garment hanger is inserted into the garment. Known designs of this type also provide rigidity once the garment hanger is adjusted into an operative form with the arms extended and requires actions similar to those discussed above in connection with rigid hangers (and usually requiring use of both hands) for removing the hanger from the garment. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,584 and U.S. Design Pat. No. Des. 355,771 to Adams have a hinged frame which latches into an operative configuration. While the latch can be released with one hand, allowing the arms to fold downward, the arms must be raised manually to an operative and latched position by gripping them with both hands through the fabric of the garment which is especially difficult if the garment is damp or wet. Failure of the latch or accidental disengagement thereof will also render the hanger apparatus inoperative and allow the garment to fall therefrom.
Likewise, U.S. Pat. No. 5,397,037 to Ozawa requires both manual raising of the arms to an operative position simultaneously with both hands and, to remove the hanger from the garment, the pressing of a hook portion toward the body of the hanger to release a detent to allow the arms to again be folded downwardly. The Ozawa design also requires a relatively large plurality of intricate and close-fitting, interacting parts which are subject to wear in order to reconcile the downward folding arm structure with relatively secure holding of the garment; the latter tending to diminish greatly with wear of the parts, particularly the detent structure on which the design relies. The many moving parts which engage each other closely with sliding motions are also particularly likely to snag or otherwise engage the fabric of the garment (particularly if the fabric is thin) and thus to damage the garment, malfunction during insertion into or removal from the garment and to require a protracted and complicated process to disengage the hanger from the garment during which damage the likelihood of damage to the garment is greatly increased.
Horizontally folding hangers are also known, such as U.S. Design Pat. No. Des. 349,410 to Morales-Rivera. However, horizontally folding garment hangers are usually intended only to facilitate storage of the hanger and are generally awkward to fold for this purpose and/or less than optimally secure for the hanging of garments. They are especially awkward to unfold to an operative configuration after insertion into a garment since the unfolding operation, in its intermediate positions necessarily involves a three-dimensional volume of substantial dimensions (within the garment) rather than motion substantially in a plane. Horizontal forces applied to a garment hanging therefrom (as is a common action when a person is looking to make a choice among garments hung in a closet or cabinet) may cause sudden folding of the hanger to occur and disengagement of the garment from the hanger.
Additionally, in regard to known folding garment hangers, the folding function thereof often precludes formation of the arm portions or the overall hanger into a shape which optimally supports the shape of the garment or which is aesthetically pleasing, itself. For example, the patents to Adams and Ozawa, discussed above, are constrained to a utilitarian, substantially planar shape which does not simulate the shape (e.g. in front-to-back width) of the human shoulders and a fixed slope which may or may not closely match the shape of the corresponding portions of the garment. These concerns are important for expensive garments which are fabricated or tailored to closely match the shoulder contours of a wearer or which have a small neck aperture. In the latter case, arms which are too nearly horizontal in an operative position may stretch portions of the garment at the shoulder portions of the garment near the arm apertures/sleeves while too great a slope tends to stretch the neck aperture of the garment.